The electoral map candidate Barack Obama remade in 2008 appears to be retreating into its familiar patterns.Obama's election was a very unique set of circumstances, and I guarantee you he won't be able to replicate it in 2012. Voters were sold on the hope and change message, and on Obama's charismatic personality. He had no resume of achievements he could point to - it was all rainbows and unicorns and no more George W. Bush.
Obama broke the decisive role Ohio and Florida seemed to play in presidential elections, by moving from trench warfare engagement in the two states to a broader battlefield on which Republicans were placed on the defensive in states they'd once taken for granted. And his victories in places where Democrats had fared poorly in recent elections — Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia, the interior West — seemed to validate his strategists' claims that he had consigned the red state-blue state presidential dichotomy to the bookstore remainders bin.
But now some of the same unlikely states that Obama put in his party's column 15 months ago feature Senate, House and governor's races with Democratic candidates in grave danger of losing in what is quickly shaping up to be a toxic election cycle.
While off-year and down-ballot elections are inherently different than presidential contests, the rapid reversal in Democratic fortunes in the very places where Obama's success brought so much attention suggests that predictions of a lasting realignment were premature.
And it's raising the question of whether the president's 2008 win was the result of a unique set of circumstances that will be difficult for him to replicate again and perhaps downright impossible for other Democrats on the ballot to reprise.
Add to that the weak Republican candidate, John McCain, and there was almost no way he could lose, even pushing socialistic programs.
In 2012 things will be very different. He now has a record in office on which he'll have to stand. He also has a record of the things he tried to do but failed, and the voter's vocal rejection of those failed ideas such as Obamacare and cap-and-tax.
Whatever charisma he might have once had that caused young women to faint at his rallies is pretty much gone except among the true believers. Voters are tired of his fancy rhetoric since we now know it's not backed up by anything. The days of just getting by with good speeches is over. Voters have seen the reality of far left liberalism and they don't like it.
The second half of his first term is likely to be hamstrung by a Congress that's a lot less friendly to him than he had for the first two years. Even with overwhelming majorities he couldn't get his agenda passed. How do you think he'll do with much narrower Dem majorities, or possibly even GOP majorities in one or more Houses of Congress?
No, there won't be another magic election for Obama like 2008 again.
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1 comment:
Amen to tired of the rhetoric. They said he was such a brilliant speaker, but I think he's a great bore.
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